More than half a year ago, the little one has joined the forest kindergarden and in a few days, summer holidays will officially begin. Time for a small update. At the beginning, I was quite sceptical whether a forest kindergarden might be the right concept for the little one. She did have a time last year when she wasn’t too keen on going outside. Also, I was wondering about things like reading, crafting and pre-school stuff and how it is going to fit in a forest kindergarden (not sure yet how important the pre-school activities are, but I think that kids are eager to it at a certain age anyway).

More than anything else, I was hoping for good weather during the first week.

Well, except for one day, the weather during the first week was absolutely horrible. It was puring dogs and cats (I was sitting at home, staring out of the window and feeling sorry for my kid), on the third day they had to go to the emergency shelter due to a storm and on the last day it was windy with -8° celsius. Moreover, in January it is really, really dark at 8am – it did feel kind of weird to leave my child in a pitch black forest in the morning!

So far, the little one hasn’t complained about the weather once (no, I am lying….yesterday, she would have preferred to stay in bed because it was again raining cats and dogs. But when I picked her up, she didn’t say a word about the rain). No matter which type of weather: it’s fine. It doesn’t seem to affect her. There are other things than the weather that count.

The other kids, for instance. With 3,5 years it was time for the little one to finally be regularly surrounded by kids her own age. Starting with the first trial day, she made friends and the group accepted her right from the start. Generally, I feel (and I was assured the same thing by the other parents) that the children in the forest kindergarden take especially good care of each other. There are certain rules – always stay in sighting distance of the teachers, for instance, and don’t go back to the parking area or the lake on your own – and the kids are taking care that everyone follows these rules. At the same time, the kids identify themselves strongly with the forest. “We are the forest kids!” was the first sentence with which we were by the children greeted on our first day. In the “normal” kindergarden, which the children visit every second week for their music session, noone is saying “We are the blue/yellow/green group!”

Moreover, the children have an incredible freedom in the forest. They are allowed to be as loud as they want. Quite often I can already here them although I haven’t even reached the parkin lot. – wolf sounds, ululation, laughter or the goodbye ritual. They are allowed to climb and romp around and run and carve, whatever they like. Amost every day, the little one is covered in mud when I pick her up. Every now and then she has a patch on her hand. She got very confident in climbing. At the normal kindergaden, the kids are allowed to climb the trees up to 1,5 meters. The forest teacher only laughed and said that 1,5 meters isn’t really considered climbing, is it? In the forest, the best climbing girl sometimes climbs up to four meters. The rule is: only climb as high as you feel comfortable and check that you are able to climb down again too. And it works. The kids are only climbing as high as they are able to climb down again. During the almost 15 years that the forest group exists, nothing serious has happened.

Due to the romping around, the little one also grew more confident regarding the interaction with other kids. When she got hit by another child last year, she stood there and started crying and didn’t understand what was going on. By now, she has learned different strategies to deal with situations like this. Saying “stopp!”, looking for someone else to play or even a hearty push back. Well, the latter probably isn’t considered the best option, but hey, it’s better to know how to hold one’s ground instead of simply standing there and crying, I think.

And the reading and crafting? In the trailer there is a shelf with books and a crafting table. Even a work bench. Every second week, two retirees are coming and reading stories to the kids. There is a lot of crafting and drawing going on and the little one got a real crafting-flash since she started. She learned how to cut and how to glue and is really creative. Also, I noticed that one game the kids in the forest love to play is role-play. Let it be fire dragons, pirates, wolves, bears, princesses, horses or police men…there is a role-play almost every day!

The popular risks – mainly ticks – have been limited so far. We had one tick in spring. fox tapeworm is not very common in this area and the actually most dangerous risk, the oak processionary moth, has not been sighted around our village so far. We still do have the suspicion that the little one had the Hanta virus in spring, but we don’t know for sure as they didn’t test it in the hospital. The next time when the little one has to do a blood test, we’ll check for antibodies just so we know (or don’t know). The one thing that is a bit annoying are the mosquitos. On one day in spring, the black flies started to fly and the whole kindergarden group looked like they had chickenpox. But even regarding the mosquito bites there are almost no complaints. Respect!

And the hobbit? He gets really excited every time we pick up the little one in the forest. He hugs the teachers, is greeted happily by the other kids and is already registered for autumn 2018.

(I could go on and on about how great the concept of a forest kindergarden is….but I’ll save a bit for later)

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About erdhummel

Familial entropy - that's an insight into our current life which has been fundamentally changed last summer when our daughter was born. Having studied in Cottbus, Germany, and worked/studied in Edinburgh, Scotland, we momentarily live in a small town in Switzerland where Karsten is trying to save the environment and Freddie is trying to save our sanity. Since there is not much time for elaborate, long emails while doing that, we thought a blog might be a good option to smuggle ourselves into the lifes of our friends.

6 Responses to Waldkindergarten-Zwischenbericht / update from the forest kindergarden

I do love this concept too! And even if it seems a little wilder (in the good way of it 😉 ) it reminds me a bit of the leikkipaikka in Turku! Sure that Eléonore would have loved to go in such a forest kindergarten. In September it will be kindergarten “for real”. But the teachers do look very nice and the classrooms are awesome (toys, books, aquariums, scientific experiments and on and on… wish I could go there too!)
And don’t worry about the pre-school skills, I’m truly convinced that playing is learning. And actually the best way to learn!
Btw it’s always a pleasure to read you and be somehow up-to-date with your lives 🙂 Good God our blogs exist 😉
Take care! Lots of hugs to you 4 😚

From what I heard Americans are indeed really good in terms of pre-school experiments and science (after all, they were among the first countries with “hands-on-museums”!!). I am sure Eleonore will be more than happy! And you are, by the way, on my to do list for our holiday……I wanted to write you a proper letter ages ago 🙂